The toxic chemical melamine is probably being routinely added to Chinese animal feed, state media has reported. Correspondents say the unusually frank reports in several news outlets are an admission that contamination could be widespread throughout the food chain.

Iron ore miners face the prospect of the first price cut in seven years as steel production in China and elsewhere plunges amid the global downturn. The iron ore market has turned from a seller's market to a buyer's market, according to traders

Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon issued on Friday a call for a continuation to the halt to fighting announced by rebel militia leader Laurent Nkunda, stressing the heavy humanitarian toll of the violence which has engulfed the east of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC).

BT has been forced to pay the UK Ministry of Defence £1.3m in compensation after some of its staff met call-answering targets by phoning each other. The Audit Commission found they fixed figures to help the company avoid fines for not answering calls quickly enough.

The International Monetary Fund (IMF) is creating an emergency fund for emerging market economies to help them weather the global credit crisis. The Group of 24 developing countries, which includes nations from Latin America, Asia and Africa, had requested such a development earlier this month.

The US Federal Reserve agreed on Wednesday to provide 30 billion US dollars each to the central banks of Brazil, Mexico, South Korea and Singapore, expanding its effort to unfreeze money markets to emerging nations for the first time.

The amount of methane in Earth's atmosphere shot up in 2007, bringing to an end a period of about a decade in which atmospheric levels of the potent greenhouse gas were essentially stable, according to a team led by Massachusetts Institute of Technology researchers.

Business and consumer confidence in the 15 nations of the Euro zone fell to a 15-year low in October, the European Commission said Thursday, as a credit crunch hits consumer spending and forces companies to shed jobs.

Microsoft, Google and Yahoo have signed a global code of conduct promising to offer better protection for online free speech and against official intrusion. The Global Network Initiative follows criticism that companies were assisting governments in countries like China to censor the Internet.